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Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of "Wong Kar-Wai"
Author(s): Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli

Source: Film Criticism, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Winter, 2000-01), pp. 2-20
Published by: Allegheny College
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Trapped in the Present: Time
in the Films of Wong Kar-Wai
Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli
Postmodernity is associated not only with new ways of

experiencing the world surrounding us, but with new perceptions of
the very dimensions of human experience, such as time and space,
which, according to Kant, however subjective, are permanent categories.
Theorists of the postmodern condition, including Daniel Bell, Fredric
Jameson, Jean-François Lyotard, and David Harvey, draw attention to
such phenomena as the compression of time and space, the loss of long-
term memory by individuals and whole societies, or even the end of
history and obsolescence of time. While some authors argue that a
fundamental change in human existence in relation to time has taken
place in the last thirty or forty years, others point out that many
phenomena, that contribute to the notion of "postmodern time" already
existed in the modern period or even in the first half of 19th century.
This article is concerned with the way in which Wong Kar-Wai (b.
1 958), regarded as a model example of the postmodern author, represents
time. We will argue that this representation is symptomatic of the
director's understanding of the postmodern condition and his ambiguous
attitude to postmodernity.
Cinematic connections
The most obvious sign of the prominence of time in Wong Kar-
Wai's films is their titles. Some titles emphasize the temporal, transitory
aspect of events, As Tears Go By and Days of Being Wild. Others stress
speed, as in Chungking Express, or simply include the word "time," as
in Ashes of Time. Wong Kar-Wai's films also feature an abundance of
watches, clocks, and calendars, not only as part of the design but also
as important elements of the narrative and symbolism of his films. The
characters often look at the watches and calendars and comment on the
time. In Days of Being Wild we see a woman carefully cleaning a large
clock, which literally shows the importance of time. In addition, the
director includes objects that move in a rhythmical way, reminiscent of
clocks and sand-glasses, such as juke boxes in Chungking Express and
Fallen Angels, a moving cage in Ashes of Time, or a lantern in Happy
Together.
In the emphasis he puts on the issue of time Wong Kar-Wai has a
number of antecedents in world cinema. One of them is Jean-Luc
Godard, another Alain Resnais, both regarded as key representatives
of cinematic modernism. Godard, to whom Wong Kar-Wai is often
compared (Gross 10), is renowned for his depiction of various moments
of French and world history, particularly of the 1 960s and 1 970s. Godard
himself refers to his films not as if they were single, clear-cut pieces,
but as "chapters" of a continuing investigation into history (Giannetti
33). His references to Dziga Vertov, the great chronicler of the Russian
Revolution and author of the well known Czelovek s kinoapparatom
( Man with a Movie Camera, 1929), further emphasize his project of
documenting a particular social and political reality. Critics also praise
Wong Kar-Wai for his ability to catch the spirit of time. Thus, for
example, Happy Together conveys the atmosphere of the end of the
millennium and the period when Hong Kong returned to China. Most of
the films, as Larry Gross observes in his sensitive analysis, are "inventories
of the street life and culture of contemporary Hong Kong" (6).
In contrast to Godard, who is first of all a sociologist, fascinated
by what happens to groups of people in a particular period, Wong Kar-
Wai is primarily a psychologist of time. His main interest lies in
depicting people's perception of time and its significance in their lives,
which is a matter of much less concern for Godard. On the other hand,
the emphasis that Wong Kar-Wai puts on subjective time or, more
precisely, time as a subjective experience, brings him closer to Alain
3
Resnais, director of Hiroshima, mon amour (1959), L'année dernier à
Marienbad ( Last Year in Marienbad , 1961), and Providence (1977).
However, Resnais' protagonists are overburdened by their often
traumatic recollections and their memory is a creative force, shaping
their present lives (Ward 1 4- 1 6), while for Wong Kar-Wai's heroes, as
we will try to demonstrate, the past and memory matter very little.
Instead, they live in the present.
The Age of Transience

As previously mentioned, Wong Kar-Wai's characters pay
considerable attention to what is shown on the time measuring
instruments. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, the majority of
them live in Hong Kong, a metropolis which encapsulates the rush,
efficiency, and obsession with money characteristic of contemporary
capitalism. The streets are always full of people hurrying to or from
work. It seems almost impossible to stand still, as the crowd is so dense
that it will carry an individual with it. Everything here is transformed
by human intervention: even the sky, obscured by tall buildings and
chimneys, is hardly visible. The natural division of time into day and
night is abandoned, as Hong Kong is almost as busy during the hours
of darkness as in the daylight hours, and many activities take place
literally underground in the subterraneous shopping centers and railway
stations. The speed of city life is particularly visible in comparison
with the tranquility of places where there are no people. The images of
nature in films such as As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild and Happy
Together are so "sugary" and idyllic that they display a suspicion that
their author doubts their existence. Secondly, the characters are obsessed
with watches because their occupations demand speed and temporal
precision. For example, gangsters and policemen must shoot quickly
or be shot by their adversaries; those who work in fast food restaurants
must serve patrons swiftly while the meal is still hot. Their work also
involves adaptability and change, every day dealing with different
people. This statement applies in particular to hitmen, who by definition
never deal with the same victims twice. As the hired killer in Fallen
Angels says of the targets: "I do not know who these people are and I
do not care. Soon they will be history."
On the other hand, a significant by-product of hurrying is a
tremendous waste of time. One of the most memorable characters is a
woman in Chungking Express who organizes drug smuggling. We see
4
her rushing the cobblers and tailors, preparing special soles and clothes
where heroin will be hidden by hired Indian smugglers. She runs from
one place to another in her high heels, hitting everything that stands in
her way. In the end, however, all her efforts seem to be in vain, and she
is a victim of her own haste: she is so distracted by all the things she
must accomplish before the train leaves that she fails to notice that the
smugglers have left, leaving her in deep trouble.
Wong Kar-Wai's characters, like millions of inhabitants of Hong
Kong and other contemporain cities, belong to what Alvin Toffler,
defines as "throw-away society" (43). They frequently eat in fast food
bars and restaurants, have sandwiches and drinks on the street, and
while at home, eat straight from tins. Moreover, Wong Kar-Wai's heroes
very rarely own the places where they live, typically renting small
apartments furnished with simple, mass produced furniture, sharing
bathrooms and kitchens in cheap hotels or boarding houses with other
residents. In this respect they strongly resemble Godard's characters
(Roud 16). Sometimes this is a consequence of having little money,
but more often it appears to be a deliberate choice rather than a necessity.
They possess few material possessions or mementos from their
childhood. Even if they do possess something of value, they part with
it without regret. An example is Yuddi, the rich playboy in Days of
Being Wild who gives his friend his expensive car before moving to the
Philippines, where he hopes to find his mother. Soon afterwards his
friend, showing the same indifference to expensive things, sells the car
and generously gives the money to Yuddi's former lover, Mimi, with
whom he is secretly in love. Some of Wong Kar-Wai's heroes, especially
cop No. 663 in the second story of Chungking Express and hired killer
Wong in Fallen Angels, do not even know what they possess. When
they are away, their flats are "invaded" by women who are infatuated
with them. They clean and reorganize their furniture, even replace their
clothes, shoes, records, and ornaments. In spite of these large scale
interventions, the owners hardly realize that they have had visitors and
remain unconcerned about what has happened to their surroundings.
The cop in Chungking Express notices that the shape of the soap has
changed and a fluffy mascot has a different color and size, but he seems
to assume that this is natural: things, like people, simply change all the
time.
Belonging to a "throw-away society," according to Toffler, is a
characteristic of a wider and multi-faceted phenomenon, "The Age of
5
Transience," in which nothing is permanent, everything is in the process
of change (43). Accordingly, not only do the heroes of Wong Kar-Wai's
films dispose of their belongings painlessly, but effortlessly change
their jobs, houses, even countries. Chungking Express portrays a fastfood
employee who becomes an air hostess and a cop who, encouraged by
the manager of a fast food bar, gives up his job and buys his own
business. The manager, on the other hand, ventures into the karoake
trade. Ex-convict He Qiwu in Fallen Angels, who makes his living by
reopening shops after they have closed for the night, starts working in
a Japanese restaurant. Journalist Mr. Chow in In the Mood For Love
moves to Singapore, while his wife's lover and husband of Mrs. Chan,
whom Mr. Chow loves, is often in Japan for work. Yuddi and Mimi in
Days of Being Wild travel to the Philippines; Happy Together is set
amongst immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan who moved to
Buenos Aires. None of them have permanent jobs or a place to live.
Instead, they travel from one place to another and eventually leave
Argentina. Those who live in Hong Kong are rarely born there, coming
from Macao, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, or mainland China (as did the
director himself, who was born in Shanghai), or else their parents were
immigrants. They typically do not bring with them anything from their
old places, their luggage being always literally and metaphorically very
light; the children of the immigrants have no knowledge of their parents'
countries.
Many of the characters, particularly the men, not only shun
permanent homes but avoid stable relationships, again like Godard's
people. Instead of having wives or girlfriends, they typically use
prostitutes or seek comfort in "one night stands." Otherwise, if they
find someone suitable and the relationship starts to blossom, they soon
abandon their partners in order to start a new affair. They seem to be
particularly resistant to staying with those who love and care for them,
as is the case of Yuddi in Days of Being Wild, who leaves two women
who have fallen in love with him to embark on a solitary trip to the
Philippines, of Wong in Fallen Angels, who rejects the affection of his
female agent, and of the gay couple in Happy Together, who start living
together only to part almost immediately. Mr. Chow and Mrs. Chan in
In the Mood For Love also epitomize this inability to stay together and,
despite they reciprocal attraction, are not even able to begin a
relationship that they will idealize for years to come.
Some of these people confess that their unwillingness to remain
6
in the same house or with the same person results from the nature of
their work. Wong in Fallen Angels states that if one is a hitman, one
should not have a wife and children. However, it is difficult to say if
their unwillingness to become involved in a stable relationship results
from their risky and unstable occupations or if they choose such jobs to
avoid stable relationships. Another reason why Wong Kar-Wai's
characters avoid stable relationships is their fear of monotony. "Life
with you is so boring," Ho Po-wing in Happy Together tells Fai, a man
with whom he has been in love for many years; "Get too close and you
will find him boring," muses the heroine of Fallen Angels about her
business partner, with whom she is secretly in love. The fear of boredom
often hides the fear of looking under the surface, of discovering the
true identity of the beloved and perhaps finding only emptiness. The
motif of the dominance of surface over substance is typical of
postmodernism, epitomized in postmodern art by such forms as pop
video or advertising (Eagleton 385-387). Wong Kar-Wai applies this
motif to postmodern life, which looks attractive and adventurous but
lacks any purpose and meaning.
The result of constant change is not only neglect and instantaneous
abolition of the past but also lack of respect for the future. The characters
typically do not care about what will happen to them the next day, even
if they will still be alive, and they are determined not to learn the lessons
of the past. Many of them, such as Wong in Fallen Angels, Ah-wah in
As Tears Go By, and Yuddi in Days of Being Wild, who are all shot
dead, lose their lives unnecessarily. They could easily avoid their tragic
fate if only they were more careful. Yet many of them deliberately put
themselves in extremely dangerous situations, as if seeking death,
perhaps convinced that there is no point in prolonging their empty,
meaningless existences. Another consequence of the constant changing
of places and relationships is isolation. The way Wong Kar-Wai endows
all his main characters with a voiceover, creating an inner monologue,
strengthens the impression that his characters are trapped in their
separate microcosms. As Larry Gross puts it, "each perspective tends
to enforce the isolation and the distance of one's character's experience
of the world from that of the others. Voiceover doesn't unify this world,
it irrevocably enunciates its fragmentation" (9). The wide-angle
distortion of images, used most extensively in Fallen Angels, which
creates an effect of distance-in-proximity, plays a similar function as
voiceovers, emphasizing that the characters can be brought together
7
only by the intervention of the filmmaker (Rayns, "Fallen Angels," 42).
The qualities we have been discussing -recklessness, disengagement,
isolation-may also be connected with the youth of Wong Kar-Wai's
protagonists, almost all of whom are in their 20s. In contrast, the older
characters, such as He Qiwu's father in Fallen Angels, or Chang's
parents in Happy Together, lead more permanent, stable lives and are
less adventurous than the younger generation.
Addicted to dates
On the surface the majority of Wong Kar-Wai's characters resign
themselves completely to the transience of their lives and the fast food
culture that surrounds them. Yet some elements of their behavior
suggests the opposite: a desperate attempt to find something stable.
The most interesting example is He Qiwu, a young policeman in the
first story of Chungking Express. One gets the impression that he does
not want so much to arrest dangerous criminals as to "arrest" time. He
insists on not missing the exact moment when he will turn 25 years old
and rebels against the expiration of material things and feelings. The
need for permanence is symbolized in the password "10,000 years of
love" that He Qiwu chooses to identify messages left on his pager and
in his obsession with tins of pineapple. Pineapples were the favorite
fruit of his girlfriend May, who dumped him on the 1 st of April without
any obvious reason. Every day since then He Qiwu has bought a tin of
pineapple with an expiry date of 1st of May. He does this because he
gave his love one month to expire. During this month He Qiwu
unsuccessfully tries to contact May, phoning her and leaving messages
for her with their common friends. On the 30th of April he has great
difficulty finding a tin with an expiry date of May 1. The shopkeeper,
whom he pesters about the tin of fruit, informs him that he does not
keep things that will expire tomorrow and gives him a whole box of
tins of time-expired food. Soon He Qiwu discovers that even a beggar
does not want such food for free. On April 30 he also realizes that his
beloved May has dumped him for another man, which convinces him
that for her he was no more than a tin of pineapple: an object of fast
consumption, to be disposed of easily when another, fresher "fast food"
becomes available.
Yuddi, the young, rich playboy in Days of Being Wild, has a
similarly obsessive attitude to time as He Qiwu. At the beginning of
the film he asks Su Lizhen, an attractive barwoman, to look at his watch
for a minute and then says: "One minute before 3 p.m. on April 16th
1960 you were with me. Because of you, I will remember this minute.
From now on we have been friends for one minute. This is a fact which
you can not deny." What is interesting in this scene is the arbitrariness
of Yuddi's choice of a certain moment as the beginning of his
relationship with Su Lizhen. It seems as if this point in time gave
meaning to their being together rather than the other way round, the
beginning of their love affair giving meaning to a particular date. Yuddi's
insistence on remembering the date when his friendship with Su Lizhen
started suggests that he is anxious that without the connection of an
event with a particular moment, the event will disappear into oblivion.
To put it metaphorically, for him time as measured by clocks and
calendars is not just a river-bed, waiting to be filled with happenings
and thoughts, but an active force, making things happen.
The characters' obsession with precise dates conveys their desire
to find coherence in a world that changes so quickly one hardly notices
what has happened. Unable to remember events, interpret them correctly
(He Qiwu's failed to realize that May was losing interest in him), or
even notice them, they want at least to see and remember the dates
themselves. "Raw" or "bare" dates are a substitute for the whole event,
understood as a date furnished with meaning. This idea of time contrasts
with that which we can find in the masterpiece of literary modernism,
Remembrance of Things Post (1913-27) by Marcel Proust and in many
other modernist novels, where time is so heavy with events and so
perfectly defined by what happened in private and social history that it
hardly needs to be defined by the clocks or calendars. The phenomenon
of replacing "meaningful time" with "raw time" (typically connected
with the advancement of technology) has been noticed by many theorists
of the postmodern condition, including Fredric Jameson, David Harvey,
Alvin Toffler, and Paul Virilio. It strongly affects the temporal hierarchy,
undermining the importance of the past and future and increasing the
significance of the present. Paul Virilio claims that "the new
technological time has no relation to any calendar of events nor to any
collective memory. It is pure computer time, and as such helps construct
a permanent present" (Virilio 15).
More generally, Wong Kar-Wai's characters' preoccupation with
time shown on clocks and calendars paradoxically reveals the director's
conviction in the diminishing significance of time as a dimension of
human experience. In this respect his stance is reminiscent of that of
9
Alain Robbe-Grillet, who claims that "in modern narrative, it seems as if
time is cut off from its temporality" and does not matter any more ( 1 33).
According to Ursula K. Heise, Robbe-Grillet's view encapsulates the
postmodern notion of time as redundant both in literature and human
life. She contrasts it with high modernism, which never undermined
time as a useful category of human experience per se, only rejected
tradition and the past as irrelevant to the present (32-33). By the same
token, it can be argued that Wong Kar-Wai's notion of temporality is
also postmodern. However, it must be emphasized that although the
director is aware of the crisis of temporality, of the disappearance of
time as it was previously experienced, he does not dispense with time
as a "problem" for people and for the narrative.
Lightness of being
Although superficially very different-Yuddi is rich and glamorous,
while his lover Su Lizhen is poor and shy-the two characters of Days
of Being Wild have one important feature in common: they both have
problems with their personal histories. Yuddi does not know his real
parents; his rich mother abandoned him when he was a baby, leaving
him to be brought up by an ex-courtesan. The mother, who lived in the
Philippines, did not keep in contact with her son except to send money
for his maintenance, and Yuddi's foster mother did not tell him about
the woman who brought him into the world, pretending that she was
his biological mother. Su Lizhen is an immigrant from Macao. She
complains that Hong Kong was never a motherland for her, that she
always felt a stranger in the vast city. Her job as a barwoman and ticket
seller is demeaning and boring, she has no friends or family in Hong
Kong (her "smart" cousin with a good job and respectable boyfriend is
only a source of envy to her). Moreover, she can not even be nostalgic
for Macao, as she does not have any ties with her old family and did
not like her old country either.
Both Su Lizhen and Yuddi attempt to overcome their lack of roots.
Su attempts to create her own history by falling in love with Yuddi and
trying to persuade him to marry her, only to precipitate their break-up.
Yuddi goes to the Philippines to find out about his true mother. His
mission, however, fails, as his mother does not want to see him. The
whole trip ends in disaster when Yuddi, who lost all his money in Manila,
tries to acquire an American passport. He attacks a man who was
supposed to arrange a false passport for him and is himself mortally
10
wounded. He dies on a train, heading in an unknown direction, even
more rootless and devoid of history than at the beginning of his
metaphorical journey to find his past.
Yuddi perfectly embodies the tension between the desire to have
a meaningful life, including a history and a memory, and the desire to
live "lightly," which is also the case of Ah-wah in Aí Tears Go By,
Wong in Fallen Angels and Fai in Happy Together. Yuddi's desire to
stay forever in the present is revealed in the story, which he recounts
repeatedly, of a bird without legs who flies all his life and stops only
once, to die. Obviously, the metaphor of the bird without legs refers to
himself. The story is dismissed by a sailor whom Yuddi meets in the
Philippines. Minutes before his death Yuddi becomes even more
dismissive of the legless bird than the sailor, claiming that the bird
never began his journey, as it was dead from the start. His opinion can
be identified with that of Wong Kar-Wai: the dream of living always in
the present is impossible to fulfill those who try to fly all their lives are
even more entrapped than those who manage to settle down.
The dream of abolishing both the past and the future, of always
being able to start afresh, is neither confined to misfits, who are plentiful
in Wong's films, nor to contemporary times, when most of Wong's
narratives are set. In the Mood For Love is set in the 1960s. The
chronological unfolding of the (unrealized?) love story between Mr.
Chow and Mrs. Chan is challenged by the repetition, with small
modifications, of fragments of film; furthermore, the opening caption
and the concluding sequences seem to consign the characters'
relationship to the past, but the ambiguous use of Mr. Chow's voiceover
and the fragmentary style of the montage annul the idea of time, of
both past and future, and fix the characters' encounter in the eternal yet
ambiguous present of memory. The heroes of Ashes of Time, set in a
medieval or mythical past, also do not want to be confined to any
concrete, defined history. Some of them even drink a "magic wine"
that allows them to forget everything. Wong Kar-Wai seems to treat the
desire to "live in the present" as a universal human plight. Although
his characters typically run away from their past, avoiding any type of
permanence and even praising their state of living lightly, in a subtle
way the director promotes the opposite: life based on the solid
foundations of recognition and reconciliation with one's past. This ethos
is demonstrated most forcefully in Happy Together, where one of the
homosexual lovers, Fai, who decides to return to Hong Kong and his
11
family, becomes liberated and happy, while the other, Ho, who keeps
drifting in Buenos Aires, is suffocated, miserable, perhaps even lost. It
could be argued that Wong Kar-Wai represents and problematizes the
postmodern condition, but does not ascribe to it nor approve of it.
Time recreated through the media

Unlike Yuddi, who insists on finding out about his past, the hitman
Wong in Fallen Angels invents his personal history. He does this by
paying an unknown woman and a child to pose with him on a
photograph, as if they were all one family. Later on, when asked by his
old classmate about what he has been doing since leaving school, Wong
shows him the photograph of his "wife" and "son" and the old friend
comments on how the people in the picture suit each other (in spite of
the fact that Wong's supposed wife is black). This photograph, in
common with that of Rachel and her mother in Blade Runner (1982)
and the "iconic" picture of Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks (1989), serves
as the ultimate testimony of the existence of a past of a certain kind, in
the case of Wong, of his marriage. In common with Blade Runner and
Twin Peaks, Wong's photo is a false document, testifying to relationships
and events, that never took place: Rachel never had a mother, the real
Laura was very different from the happy and innocent girl shown in
the photo. More often than not, however, the photographs in Wong's
films are true documents, testifying to real events and emotions. They
also have the power to revitalize old or strengthen current emotions.
For example, Ho in Happy Together cries looking at photos of himself
with his lover, Fai. In the case of Yuddi in Days of Being Wild, the lack
of photographs of his mother and of letters written by her adds to his
feeling of rootlessness. Not surprisingly, he bullies his foster mother
into showing him documents about his real mother.
The effort to acquire photographs and other documents concerning
one's past demonstrates that every human being (or everybody who
aspires to this status, like Blade Runner's Rachel), in common with
every nation, needs some sort of history. Wong Kar-Wai also shows
that it does not really matter if the photographs and the past to which
they refer are authentic. Whole states are founded on myths, and even
our own personal history is usually made up of memories that have
crystallized after having been recalled and recounted many times (even
just to ourselves).
The bulk of modern and postmodern theory draws attention to the
12
fact that our connection with the past is getting weaker. Similarly, the
very notion of "history" has changed. History stopped being regarded
as frozen time; instead, it is now considered as time re-created by each
new generation through the use of various tools. The mass media play
an important function in transforming our relationship to national and
private history. One of the first intellectuals to draw attention to this
fact was Charles Baudelaire who, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
lamented that the invention of photography destroyed our sense of
history (1 12). Similarly, Walter Benjamin complained that the result of
mechanical reproduction, typical of the technological evolution of the
modern media, is a loss of the sense of authenticity. However, the full
impact of the development and proliferation of the media on our sense
of history was only appreciated in the last few decades, particularly by
authors such as Jean-François Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard, and Fredric
Jameson. Drawing on Lacan, Jameson describes the current state of
the subject as "schizophrenic" and mourns that "we live in a perpetual
present. The informational function of the media is ... to help us forget, to
serve as the very agents and mechanism for our historical amnesia" (125).
by producing images as signifiers without reference to the real world.
Baudrillard, referring to similar phenomena as Jameson, goes even
further in his conclusions, claiming that their result is the dominance
of hyperreality and the de-humanization of humans. "With the television
image-the television being the ultimate and perfect object for this new
era-our own body and the whole surrounding universe become a control
screen." claims Baudrillard (127). A different approach to postmodern
media and art is adopted by Linda Hutcheon in The Politics of
Postmodernism. She shares with Jameson and Baudrillard the view
that the media do not give us direct access to reality, but distort and
construct it. However, drawing mainly on contemporary photography
and novels, Hutcheon also acknowledges the value of the media in
making us aware of the mechanisms and limitations of various forms
of representation. Consequently, she endorses their usefulness in
teaching us about our past and our identity.
Many films made in the 1980s and 1990s, both "realistic" and
science-fiction, including Family Viewing (1987) by Atom Egoyan, 12
Monkeys (1995) by Terry Gilliam, The End of Violence (1996) by Wim
Wenders, eXistenZ (1999) by David Cronenberg, as well as the
previously mentioned Blade Runner, share Jameson and Baudrillard's
dystopian vision of the contemporary world. In contrast to Scott,
13
Wenders, Egoyan, and Cronenberg, and in line with Abbas Kiarostami,
the director of the "Koker trilogy" (1987-1994) and with Hutcheon,
Wong Kar-Wai shows more sympathy for media and modern technology.
Instruments of communication are prominent in his films, but they are
hardly autonomous: they still serve people rather than control them. In
Fallen Angels Sato, an immigrant from Japan who is the manager of a
sushi restaurant in Hong Kong, uses a video camera to communicate
with his family in Japan. Sato teaches He Qiwu, a mute young ex-
convict, how to use the camera, and He records his father in his daily
routine. The very act of recording brings He Qiwu closer to his father,
reviving a relationship that was undermined by the son's impairment,
by the father's grief for his dead wife, and by his busy job as a hotel
manager. The video recording also brings to the surface emotions the
two characters are otherwise unable to express. Both father and son
enjoy watching it immensely. As Tony Rayns observes: "The sequence
lasts all of three minutes and speaks volumes about father-son
relationships, parental expectations and disappointments, filial rebellion
and love, and emotional inarticulacy" ("Charisma Express," 36).
Moreover, for He Qiwu the tape is his main keepsake after his father's
death. Wong Kar-Wai makes us believe that thanks to the video his
character remembers his father longer, more tenderly and accurately.
The modern media transform the past into a quasi-present, make the
memories feel almost as vivid as if they were experienced here and
now. On the other hand, they certify to an absence of what was
represented. He Qiwu quotes a Chinese proverb that to photograph
somebody is to accelerate his death. This conviction in the paradoxical
character of the media as vehicles of both appropriating reality and
making it obsolete strongly reflects the views of both Susan Sontag
and Linda Hutcheon on photography.
The media also provide Wong Kar-Wai's characters with a sense
of connection with their wider ethnic community and, consequently,
with the national history. For example, in a scene in Happy Together,
when the death of Deng Xiao-Ping is announced on television, one
suspects that thanks to television Fai who lives abroad, feels closer to
his homeland. In Happy Together modern technology also plays an
almost magical function, allowing Fai to unburden his soul, as happens
when his Taiwanese friend, Chang, asks him to confide to a tape-recorder
what makes him unhappy. Fai, unable to say anything, only weeps into
the machine, and subsequently, Chang takes it to Ushuaia in Tierra del
14
Fuego, known as "The End of the World," where a lantern was built on
top of a mountain. It is believed that sorrows can be thrown from the
mountain and disappear forever. Chang plays the tape with Fai's
weeping, and Fai, who is already in Taipei at the time after months or
perhaps years of anguish, eventually feels happy.
Modern communication devices are sometimes portrayed by Wong
Kar Wai as forces of alienation. For example, because of the messages
that Wong in Fallen Angels and his agent leave for each other on pagers,
they do not need to meet. Wong enjoys the distance, believing that
partners should not be emotionally involved. For his agent, however,
who is secretly in love with Wong, not being able to communicate with
him directly is very painful. Yet, on the whole, Wong Kar-Wai rejects
the view that mass media are by their very nature sinister; rather, it is
up to people to use them in ways that will benefit or harm them.
TVapped in the present

The prominence of the present is typically conveyed through the
structure of Wong-Kar Wai's narratives. Firstly, the narratives often
cover a short time span, hours rather than days or weeks. On some
occasions, particularly in Chungking Express and Fallen Angels,
narrative time seems identical to real time. Secondly, everything happens
at once; the present moment is always packed with events, people, and
their thoughts, and there is typically more than one main narrative
running in each film. In Chungking Express two stories are told
consecutively, in Fallen Angels two narratives intertwine. Ashes of Times
superficially has a linear narrative and only one main character, a
contract killer. However, his "meta narrative" unfolds stories of other
people that often eclipse his own. Again, all the narratives appear to
take place at the same time. The impression of narrative abundance is
increased through sharp, MTV-style editing, often reflecting images of
the same thing seen from many different perspectives. The films also
produce an "aural abundance" reminiscent of the cinema of Jean-Luc
Godard. The noisy soundtrack includes dialogue or voiceover narration,
various city noises produced by cars, planes, and people quarreling in
the streets, and loud music. The sounds perfectly convey the speed and
pressure of life in contemporary Hong Kong.
The importance attached to the present moment is also
communicated in the difference between what is revealed to the viewers
and what is hidden. In traditional action cinema, the spectator knows
15
the present, while the future is hidden from him. The main point of
watching the film is to find out what will happen next. In Wong Kar-
Wai's films, on the other hand, the future is typically revealed to us at
the very beginning, either in the voiceover or visually. The characters
themselves seem to know perfectly well their own fate and that of others.
Examples include Ashes of Time , which starts with the words of the
protagonist explaining, "In the years to come I will be given the
nickname Malicious West"; Chungking Express, in which the main
character informs us that "55 hours later, I was in love with this woman";
and Days of Being Wild, which begins with the images of a tropical
forest identical with that which will be shown at the end of the film, the
scene of Yuddi's death. There is also nothing mysterious about the past
-it is revealed by the characters with the same sincerity and matter of
fact accuracy as the future. Both past and future are closed, sealed,
determined. Thus, paradoxically, only the present remains open, an
enigma and a chance for adventure. In spite of Wong Kar-Wai's
nonchalant attitude to the narrative and in contrast to many postmodern
films such as Pulp Fiction (1994), his films generally obey the rule of
chronology, containing few flashbacks or flashforwards. Again, we will
argue that this reveals his desire to stick to the present.
Moreover, unlike the bulk of postmodern directors such as David
Lynch, Quentin Tarantino, Derek Jarman, Ridley Scott, and Terry
Gilliam, Wong Kar Wai does not instill his films with retro architecture,
old cars, or references to forgotten film stars. To use Fredric Jameson's
phrase, he has no "appetite for dead styles and fashions "(1 1 8-125).The
contemporary culture he depicts, although often dangerous and
dystopian, looks robust and thriving. Its success does not appear to be
founded on past achievements, but on the strength of the present. Thus,
his characters typically do not ponder what happened to them, they are
always prepared to move on and start over again.5 Jameson regards
nostalgia as the symptom of the past being taken over by the present,
but in our opinion it rather testifies to the strength of the past (however
distorted or fake this past may be) in shaping present cultures and
societies. Consequently, Wong Kar-Wai's rejection of nostalgia suggests
that he does not seek any safe regions of escape from the present; rather
he looks it "straight in the eye" in an almost heroic fashion.
Wong Kar-Wai seems to be fascinated with the idea of alternative
temporalities; the world for him consists of numerous private
microcosms, some of them real, the majority only possible and existing
16
in people's imagination. As Ursula K. Heise notes, the notion of
alternative temporalities is central to the narrative organization of
postmodern novels, such as those of Italo Calvino and Alain Robbe-
Grillet (29). Wong Kar-Wai is also not unique in bringing the idea of
parallel, private universes to the cinema; the concept pervades the films
of Eric Rohmer such as Ma nuit chez Maud (My Night with Maud,
1969) or Le rayon vert (The Green Ray, 1986); the films of Alain
Resnais, particularly his Smoking/Non Smoking (1993); Slacker (1991)
by Richard Linklater; Krzysztof Kieslowski's Przypadek (Blind Chance,
1982) and Dekalog (1988); and, to a certain extent, the films of Jean-
Luc Godard. However, each of these filmmakers seems to have a
different reason to ponder on parallel worlds. Rohmer is interested
primarily in the motives and results of human decisions; Resnais reflects
on narrative as a game of combinations and alternatives; Linklater
investigates what can be described as an ontology of microcosms;
Kieslowski ponders on the tragic dimension of the human condition;
Godard uses the realm of the possible mainly as a vehicle to uncover
the artificiality and arbitrariness of cinema.
Wong Kar-Wai, on the other hand, draws attention to the unlimited
opportunities of people meeting each other and overcoming their
solitude, as conveyed at the beginning of Chungking Express when He
Qiwu says in his inner monologue: "We rub shoulders every day. We
might not know each other. But we could be friends some day". Almost
the same words are repeated by He Qiwu's namesake, played by the
same actor, in Fallen Angels. At the same time, the director of Fallen
Angels notes the gulf between the possibility of numerous encounters
and the tragedy of unfulfilled love and friendship, and ultimately of
solitude, which he seems to regard as the natural state of human
existence. Time is the main reason why people do not meet: they occupy
the same space, but in different times. In Days of Being Wild Mimi
comes to Manila when her lover Yuddi is already on the train, leaving
the city; Fai in Chungking Express and Wong's agent in Fallen Angels
always visit their men when they are not there; in In the Moood For
Love Mrs. Chan goes to Mr. Chow's apartment in Singapore but he is
not there, and when he arrives she is already gone. Even relying on
knowledge of other people's habits does not help in meeting them, as
their habits tend to change. Thus, Chang in Happy Together visits the
restaurant where he used to sit with his friend Fai, but Fai is already in
Taipei, seeing Chang's parents; Charlie in Fallen Angels goes to a
17
football match in search of her ex-boyfriend, but on this occasion he is
somewhere else. When those who loved each other eventually meet,
the impulse by which they sought each other's company has passed.
The structures of Wong Kar-Wai's narratives perfectly render the
notion of fragmented identities and the "cultural schizophrenia" of our
times by being themselves fragmented, abrupt, cryptic, and ambiguous.
Without a rationale the director may introduce a new character, as in
Days of Being Wild, which finishes with a snapshot of the life of a man
whose identity is never revealed. In reality he was meant to be the hero
of the second part of a film trilogy that was never produced. Whatever
the explanation, the very fact of including a character who is so
unconnected to the narrative suggests that Wong Kar-Wai lacks respect
for the classic rules of storytelling, favoring a postmodern collage. In a
similar, disorienting way, the director introduces new characters in
Chungking Express , Ashes of Time, and Happy Together. In common
with the anti-psychological cinema of Jean Luc Godard, he avoids
explanation of why certain things happen but simply shows that they
do happen. Psychology assumes a link between consecutive moments
in an individual history. Consequently, rejection of psychology leads
to favoring the notion of time as disjointed. As Tony Rayns and Larry
Gross note, Wong's rejection of classical narration results in a difficulty
in "understanding" his films at the first viewing (42, 8), a phenomenon
that is typical of postmodernism.
Wong Kar-Wai's "cinema of transience"

To conclude, Wong Kar-Wai depicts in his films such postmodern
phenomena as the acceleration of the pace of human life, the loss of
permanence and stability, and a total dominance of the present over the
past and the future. Consequently, he draws attention to the increasing
inadequacy and redundancy of time in individual lives and cultures.
Although the traditional conception of time is becoming insignificant,
the effect of its absence from human experience cannot be ignored.
Many are confused, even traumatized by this phenomenon, as their
defensive expedient of replacing "meaningful time" with "raw time"
testifies. Wong Kar-Wai's oeuvre is one of "transition" between a cinema
that respects and takes for granted the notion of time as neatly divided
between past, present and future, and a cinema of "timelessness" that
does not know any other time apart from a never-ending present.
18
Notes
1 Theorists of postmodernity, such as Fredric Jameson and David Harvey
and sociologist Alvin Toffler, emphasize the connection between
acceleration of individual lives and the dynamism of contemporary
capitalism. See Fredric Jameson, "Postmodernism and Consumer
Society." Ed. Hal Foster, Postmodern Culture (London: Pluto Press,
1 985) 1 23-125; David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1990); Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (London: The Bodley
Head, 1970).
2 The expression "lightness of being" bears association with the title of

a novel by Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being', its
connection with Wong Kar-Wai's films was recognized by Larry Gross
(op. cit.,p. 8). However, in our opinion the characters in Wong Kar-
Wai's films live much more lightly than those created by Kundera.
3 See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1984); Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion
of the End (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) and "The Ecstasy
of Communication," Ed. Hal Foster, Postmodern Culture (London:
Pluto Press, 1985); Fredric Jameson, op. cit.
4 See Linda Hutcheon, "Photographic discourse" and "The paradoxes

of photography." Ed.Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism
(London: Routledge, 1 989); Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York:
Farrar, Straus& Giroux, 1977).
5 The only exception to this principle is Wong Kar-Wai's latest film, In

the Mood For Love.
Works Cited
Baudelaire, Charles. "Photography." in Beaumont Newhall (ed.),

Photography: Essays and Images. New York: The Museum of
Modern Art, 1980.
Baudrillard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication." Ed. Hal Foster,

Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1985.
Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction." in Illuminations. London: Jonathan Cape, 1970.
Eagleton, Terry. "Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism." Ed.
19
David Lodge. Modéra Criticism and Theory. London: Longman, 1988.
Giannetti, Louis D. Godard and Others: Essays on Film Form. Rutherford:
Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1975.
Gross, Larry. "Nonchalant Grace." Sight and Sound September 1996:
6-10.
Heise, Ursula K. "From Soft Clocks to Hardware: Narrative and the

Postmodern Experience of Time." in CHRONOSCHISMs. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Hutcheon, Linda. The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge, 1 989.
Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." Ed. Hal Foster.

Postmodern Culture. London: Pluto Press, 1985.
Rayns, Tony. "Charisma Express." Sight and Sound January 2000: 34-36.
- . "Fallen Angels." Sight and Sound September 1996: 42.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain. Pour un nouveau roman. Paris: Minuit, 1963.
Roud, Richard. Godard. London: Thames and Hudson, 1970.
Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: The Bodley Head, 1970.

Virilio, Paul. The Lost Dimension. New York: Semiotext(e), 1991.
Ward, John. Alain Resnais, or the Theme of Time. London: Seeker and
Warburg and BFI, 1968.
Appendix
Filmography of Wong Kar-Wai (b. 1958)
1988 - Wangjiao Kamen - As Tears Go By
1990 - A Fei Zhengzhuan - Days of Being Wild
1 994 - Dongxie Xidu - Ashes of Time
1994 - Chongqing Senlin - Chungking Express
1995 - Duoluo Tianshi - Fallen Angels
1997 - Chunguang Zhaxie - Happy Together
2000 - Huayag Nianhua - In the Mood for Love
20

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Trapped in the Present: Time in the Films of "Wong Kar-Wai"

Author(s): Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli

Ewa Mazierska and Laura Rascaroli

Postmodernity is associated not only with new ways of

The Age of Transience

Time recreated through the media

TVapped in the present

Wong Kar-Wai's "cinema of transience"

2 The expression "lightness of being" bears association with the title of

3 See Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis:

4 See Linda Hutcheon, "Photographic discourse" and "The paradoxes

5 The only exception to this principle is Wong Kar-Wai's latest film, In

Baudelaire, Charles. "Photography." in Beaumont Newhall (ed.),

Baudrillard, Jean. "The Ecstasy of Communication." Ed. Hal Foster,

Heise, Ursula K. "From Soft Clocks to Hardware: Narrative and the

Jameson, Fredric. "Postmodernism and Consumer Society." Ed. Hal Foster.

Roud, Richard. Godard. London: Thames and Hudson, 1970.

Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock. London: The Bodley Head, 1970.

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